Schizophrenia more common in famine babies

Wednesday, 3 August 2005Reuters

A child who is malnourished in the womb has an increased risk of developing schizophrenia when older. So what does the future hold for this African child growing up in famine stricken Niger? (Image: Reuters/Finbarr O'Reilly)

The link between nutritional deficiency and the mental illness is strengthened with the finding that children born during China's 1959-61 famine are twice as likely to develop schizophrenia, researchers say.

But the challenge is pinpointing what is missing from diets that could be an underlying cause of schizophrenia, says one commentator, and whether the deficiency can be compensated for.

Schizophrenia is a common mental illness characterised by confused thoughts, hallucinations and delusions. People can have low motivation, poor social skills and become withdrawn.

There is about a 1% risk of having schizophrenia at some time in your life, and it tends to run in families.

But the incidence of the illness doubles during famines in China and the Netherlands.

The Chinese findings mirror those from an earlier study of schizophrenia rates among people born in the Netherlands during the Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-45.

Researchers from Shanghai Jiaotong University examined records from around the city of Wuhu in Anhui Province, where the famine was acute and many people starved to death.

Out of more than 600,000 births during the period studied there were 4600 schizophrenia cases.

During the famine years, the birth rate declined 80% and the percentage of children who went on to develop schizophrenia rose from less than 1% to as high as 2.2%.

A complex disorder

Scientists say that schizophrenia is a complex disorder with genetic and environmental influences.

Some are increasingly seeing schizophrenia as a neurodevelopmental disorder with environmental influences shaping early brain development.

Exposure to the flu virus in the womb, a difficult birth, the season of birth, the mother's psychological condition, and nutritional deficiencies in both mother and baby are among environmental risk factors for schizophrenia.

Study author Dr David St Clair writes that "extreme stress" on prenatal development such as from a famine results in schizophrenia among those genetically predisposed to the illness.

What now?

Writing in an accompanying editorial, Dr Richard Neugebauer of the New York State Psychiatric Institute says the latest research does not directly advance the argument of how nutrition can perturb prenatal neural development and so increase the risk of schizophrenia.

For instance, it does not say whether nutritional deficiency in general or the lack of a specific nutrient increases the risk.

"If the latter, the implications extend to developed and developing countries alike," he writes.

Now, he says the challenge is pinpointing what is missing from diets that could be an underlying cause of schizophrenia, and whether the deficiency can be compensated for.